Draft Proposed Public Transportation Routes for Waterville, ME

Currently, there is a public bus transportation route in Waterville, Maine. However, this system could be improved. Our goal was to use GIS to find optimal public transportation routes throughout the city based on given points of interest and high population density areas. Three different groups of points of interest were created in the North, West, and South sections of Waterville. Using the Network Analyst tool, which calculates optimal routes, using existing street data, based on the input of stops, barriers, and impedance, we ran an analysis of what we thought would be the routes that best served the greatest number of people. Two different sets of routes were found: one with length as the impedance (the shortest length between the selected stops was favored), and one with population density as the impedance (the roads with the highest population density were favored). Finally, the times of the resulting routes (given a constant speed limit of 25 mph) were calculated and evaluated.